Proactively “From the Sea”; leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case to synergize a consistent design in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity.

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Mmmm, it all adds up know. Math is racist. That's why I don't like it.

“The Department of Justice has alleged that the testing component disproportionately disqualified minority applicants,” Deputy City Attorney Mark Stiles said. “They don’t allege that we engaged in that conduct with the intent of discrimination, but rather that the disparate impact was found to have occurred by our simply using the test.”

In a letter to the city in February, the Justice Department said Virginia Beach had “engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination” against black and Hispanic applicants.

After an 18-month investigation, the Justice Department found that the police force did not reflect the diversity of the city’s population because of how the math test was graded.

That is 18 months of your tax money.

The Justice Department claimed that the test’s pass-fail system had a disproportionate effect on minorities because the passing rates for blacks and Hispanics were less than 80 percent of the passing rate for whites.

From 2002 to mid-2005, about 85 percent of white applicants passed the math exam, compared with 59 percent of blacks and 66 percent of Hispanics.

Under the old standard, Virginia Beach required all recruits to score 70 percent on each of three written tests for reading comprehension, grammar and spelling, and math.

The Justice Department questioned whether math is relevant to the daily duties of a police officer. The city agreed to eliminate the 70 percent cutoff score for the math part of the test.

Very nice. "So officer, how can you say I was going 15 mph over the speed limit if I was doing 58 in a 45?" Oh, and speaking of tax money.

In the end, the applicants who failed under the old standard will still have to meet the department’s other entry requirements.

Whether they choose to continue to the Police Academy, those 124 former applicants are entitled to seek a share of the $160,000. The pool contains two funds: $128,000 for black applicants and $32,000 for Hispanic applicants.

Ummmm, what about the White, Asian, mixed-race, and "other" that did not pass?